SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – A U.S. investigative team that included representatives from Boeing Co. inspected the scene of a plane Tuesday. plane crash In South Korea, 179 people died while authorities conducted safety inspections of all facilities. boeing 737-800 Aircraft operated by the country’s airlines.
All but two of the 181 people on board the Boeing 737-800, operated by South Korean low-cost airline Jeju Air, died. Sunday’s crash. Video shows the plane crash-landing on its stomach at Muan International Airport in southern South Korea with its landing gear not deployed, overshooting the runaway plane and then crashing into a concrete fence and bursting into flames. was.
The plane was confirmed to be suffering from engine trouble, and preliminary inspections revealed that the pilot received a bird strike warning from the ground control center and also issued a distress signal. But many experts say problems with the landing gear are likely the main cause of the crash.
The South Korean government has begun safety inspections of all 101 Boeing 737-800 aircraft in the country. The Department of Transportation said officials were examining maintenance and operational records during a five-day safety inspection that runs through Friday.
The ministry announced that an eight-member investigation team from the United States (one from the Federal Aviation Administration, three from the National Transportation Safety Board, and four from the National Transportation Safety Board) participated. boeing — Visited the crash site on Tuesday. Test results were not immediately available.
Jeju Air President Kim Ae-be told reporters on Tuesday that the airline plans to hire more maintenance personnel and reduce the number of flights by 10-15% through March as part of efforts to improve the safety of aircraft operations. he said.
John Hansman, an aviation expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the crash was most likely the result of a problem with the plane’s hydraulic control system. He said this was consistent with the landing gear and wing flaps not deploying and “could be indicative of a control problem that explains the rush to the ground.”
The Boeing 737-800 (an earlier version of the 737 than the Max) is widely used and has a good safety record, said Najmeddin Meshkati, an engineering professor at the University of Southern California who studies aviation safety.
He said failures in systems such as broadcasting the plane’s position, operating the landing gear and deploying wing flaps to reduce speed were indicative of widespread problems affecting the electrical and hydraulic systems. Ta. He believes investigators will be able to determine what went wrong by analyzing flight data and information from the cockpit voice recorder.
“These are really the two pillars of accident analysis and accident reconstruction,” Meshkati said. Like other aviation experts, Meshkati believes that solid walls are installed just a few hundred feet (meters) from the end of the runway, given that aircraft sometimes overshoot the runway. I had doubts. “It was really very unfortunate for this plane that there was such a large concrete barrier,” he said.
South Korean authorities said they would investigate whether Muan Airport’s localizer, a concrete fence that houses a series of antennas designed to safely guide aircraft during landing, should have been made of lightweight material that is more susceptible to breakage in the event of an impact. Ta.
The crash was the worst disaster in South Korean aviation history in decades. Seven days of national mourning have been declared until January 4th.
The Department of Transportation announced Tuesday that authorities have identified 175 bodies and are conducting DNA tests to determine the identities of the remaining five. The family said authorities told them the body was so badly damaged that they needed more time to return it to their relatives.
Park Han-shin, a representative for the family, on Tuesday accused the government of failing to provide a freezer as promised and said there was a risk the body would decompose. “The final dignity of the victims has been seriously injured. We strongly criticize the authorities for not keeping their promises,” Park said.
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Associated Press writer David Koenig in Dallas contributed to this report.
